ITALIAN OPERA UNTIL THE TIME OF ROSSINI.
_Tancredi_ was Rossini's first serious opera, and the first opera by
which his name became known throughout Europe. In this work, too, we
find indicated, if not fully carried out, all those changes in the
composition of the lyric drama which, without absolutely inventing them,
he introduced from Germany, and especially from Mozart's operas, into
Italy.
It seems strange, what was nevertheless the case, that when Rossini
began to write, the mere forms of the lyric drama were, in Italy at
least, far from being looked upon as settled. Opera could not at that
time boast a history of more than about two centuries, and though it had
made great progress during the previous hundred years and was scarcely
the same entertainment as that which the most illustrious nobles in
Italy had taken under their protection in the early part of the
seventeenth century, it was still far from resembling the opera of the
present day; so much more developed, so much more elaborated.
No general view of the progress of operatic art in Europe can well be
taken; for its advance has been different in each country. But its
progress in Italy was sufficiently regular from its birth, or rather its
invention, towards the end of the sixteenth century up to the period of
Scarlatti; and from Scarlatti in a continuous line to Rossini.
Without going back to the origin of music in general, it may not be
inappropriate, in connection with Rossini's innovations, and with a view
to these innovations being better understood, to sketch in the briefest
manner the history of the musical drama in Italy from its deliberate
invention until, after its various developments, it became what Rossini
made it between the years 1813, the year in which _Tancredi_ was brought
out, and 1823, the date of the production of _Semiramide_.
The opera, so far as a natural origin can be claimed for it at all,
proceeds from the sacred musical plays of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, as the modern drama proceeds from the so-called mysteries of
the same period. Indeed the earliest musical dramas of modern Italy,
from which the opera of the present day is directly descended, were
mysteries differing only from the dramatic mysteries in having been
written for the singing, not for the speaking voice. The opera, or drama
in music, is not, compared with the spoken drama, a very ancient form of
art. Persons afflicted with a rage for seeking in the distant past
traces and origins of a form of art which was created and forced into
existence in comparatively modern times, see the first specimens of
opera in the Greek plays; a view which will be worth considering when
writers on the subject of Greek music have come to an understanding as
to its exact nature. One thing is quite certain, that the Greek plays
are remembered solely by what musicians call the "words," whereas, with
the exception of Herr Wagner's highly poetical, highly dramatic works,
there are no operas written to be performed throughout in music, which,
by their words alone, would have the least chance of living. Nor did the
musical mysteries or musical plays of the fifteenth century--which were
partly declaimed, partly sung, and always by solo voices--bear any great
resemblance to the grand operas of the present day with their airs,
duets, concerted pieces, and elaborate dramatic finales, supported by an
orchestra which is always being varied and reinforced through the
addition of new instruments, and in which composers aim constantly at
the formation of new instrumental combinations. Of course, too, the
sacred musical plays of the fifteenth century differed from our modern
operas by their subjects. A primitive sort of opera on the _Conversion
of St. Paul_, which was performed throughout in music at Rome in 1440,
is not the sort of work that would be likely to interest our modern
audiences, who entertain a marked preference for operas in which a
leading part is assigned to the prima donna, and who have no objection
to the prima donna's representing a thoroughly mundane character, such
as the fascinating Carmen, in the late M. Bizet's opera of that name, or
the less fascinating Violetta, in Verdi's _Traviata_.
The first opera on a profane, or rather on a secular subject--for it is
surely a mistake to regard everything not sacred as necessarily
profane--was the descent of Orpheus into the infernal regions, drawn
thither, as is well known, by his wife, Eurydice. The subject of
Orpheus, alike lyrical and dramatic, has been a favourite one with
composers for the last four hundred years, from Poliziano, who produced
his _Orfeo_ at Rome in 1440, up to Gluck, nearly three centuries later,
and from Gluck down to Offenbach, who delights a good many persons in
the present day. The _Orfeo_, which was brought out just four centuries
ago, at Rome, bore no more resemblance, in a musical point of view, to a
modern opera, than did the sacred musical plays before spoken of; and up
to the year 1600 we meet with no musical work which bears more than a
fundamental or general sort of resemblance to the modern opera. But
almost immediately after the production of the second _Eurydice_ a great
reformer appeared. Monteverde, the innovator in question, changed, or at
least gave new development to, the harmonic system of his predecessors,
assigned far greater importance in his operas to accompaniments, and
increased greatly both the number and the variety of the instruments in
the orchestra, which, under his arrangement, included every kind of
instrument known at the time. Monteverde employed a separate combination
of instruments to announce the entry and return of each personage in his
operas; a dramatic means made use of long afterwards by Hoffmann--better
known by his fantastic tales than by his musical works--in his opera of
_Undine_; and which cannot but suggest a similar device employed with
more system and with greater elaboration by Wagner.
Monteverde, like so many of his predecessors and followers, felt
attracted by the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, and his first work was
on the subject of _Orfeo_, which was produced in 1608 at the Court of
Mantua; ordered, it may be, by that gallant but dissolute Duke of Mantua
whom Signor Mario used to impersonate so admirably in _Rigoletto_.
Monteverde's _Orfeo_ contained parts for harpsichords, lyres, violas,
double basses, a double harp with two rows of strings, two violins,
besides guitars, organs, a flute, clarions, and even trombones. It is
interesting to know that, apart from the instrumental combinations which
announced the entry and return of each character, the bass-violas
accompanied Orpheus; the violas, Eurydice; the trombones, Pluto; the
organs, Apollo; while Charon--a most unsentimental personage, one would
think--sang to the accompaniment of that sentimental instrument, the
guitar.
I have, of course, no intention of following out the history of opera
from Monteverde to Verdi. It will be sufficient to remark that
Monteverde, the real founder of opera in something like its present
form, produced a number of works at Venice, until at last the fame of
the Venetian operas spread throughout Italy, so that by the middle of
the seventeenth century the new entertainment was established at Verona,
Bologna, Rome, Turin, Naples, and Messina. Opera, whatever its merits
and defects, is essentially a royal and aristocratic entertainment. The
drama was started by Thespis in a cart. The opera, on the other hand,
was founded by popes, cardinals, and kings. The first operatic libretto,
that of Poliziano's _Orfeo_, was the work of Cardinal Riario, nephew of
Sixtus IV. Pope Clement IX. was the author of no less than seven
libretti. The popes, indeed, used, in former days, to keep up an
excellent theatre; and even in these degenerate times the taste for
music has not, or had not until lately, died out at the Vatican.
It has been said that the history of opera, though Italy cannot claim to
have been the one scene of its development, can be more conveniently
because more continuously traced in Italy than in the various European
countries where it has been cultivated, and where, in the case of three
of these countries--Italy, Germany, and France,--it has made distinct
advances. Nor, in considering the history of opera in Italy, is it
necessary to observe its progress in Italy generally. It is sufficient
to note the changes through which it passed at Naples alone. From
Scarlatti (end of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth
century) to the immediate predecessors of Rossini, the history of the
development of the opera in Italy is indeed the history of its
development at Naples; and though, unlike previous celebrated composers,
Rossini did not pursue his studies at Naples, he soon made Naples his
head-quarters, and produced at the San Carlo theatre between the years
1815 and 1823 all his best Italian operas in the serious style:
_Otello_, for instance, _La Donna del Lago_ and _Semiramide_.
Scarlatti, the founder of the great Neapolitan school, studied at Rome
under Carrissimi; and he is memorable in musical history as having given
new development to the operatic air, while he introduced for the first
time measured recitative. Of Scarlatti's immediate followers, Logroscino
and Durante, the former introduced concerted pieces and the dramatic
finale which afterwards received new development at the hands of
Piccinni. This important feature to which modern opera owes so much of
its importance and so much of its effect, was introduced into serious
opera by Paisiello. Paisiello, like Scarlatti, Logroscino and Durante,
was professor at the Conservatorio of Naples; and under his guidance
were formed Jomelli, Piccinni, Sacchini, Guglielmi, and Cimarosa. The
particular innovations due to Piccinni and Paisiello have already been
mentioned. Cimarosa composed the best overtures which, up to his time,
the Italian school could boast of, and he was the first to introduce
quartets and other concerted pieces in the midst of dramatic action;
not, that is to say, as ornaments at the end of an act, which hitherto
had been the place conventionally assigned to them, but as integral
parts of the musical drama. This innovation occurs for the first time in
_Il Fanatico per gli antichi Romani_, which Cimarosa composed in 1773.
It was not until nineteen years afterwards that this master produced his
_Matrimonio Segreto_. But meanwhile Cimarosa had been completely
distanced by Mozart, who, himself a great inventor, and, so to say,
anticipator, adopted moreover everything that was worth adopting in the
methods of all his contemporaries and predecessors.
To resume, in as few words as possible, the history of opera in Italy up
to the time of Rossini, this form of art was at first nothing but
recitative, or recitative with a chorus at the end of each act. Then
occasional airs were introduced, then duets; and it is not until the
middle of the eighteenth century that we find an example of an operatic
trio. Quartets and dramatic finales followed in due course; and while
the Italians had been developing new methods of employing the solo
voices, Gluck had given prominence to the chorus as a dramatic factor,
and had cultivated choral writing with the happiest effect. Other
Germans, with Haydn foremost among them, had produced new orchestral
combinations, until at last Mozart joined to the vocal forms of the
Italians the instrumental forms of the Germans, while developing and
perfecting both. Rossini introduced quite gradually into Italian opera
those reforms which are particularly associated with his name; and
perhaps in no other way could he have got them accepted. But he might,
had he felt so disposed, have borrowed them one and all in a piece from
the works of Mozart.
Let it be remembered, however, as a matter of fact, that when in 1813
Rossini produced _Tancredi_, which marks the commencement of the reforms
introduced by him into serious opera, he had enjoyed no opportunity of
seeing any of Mozart's works on the stage. Probably he had studied the
music of Mozart, as we know him to have studied that of Haydn, in score;
but it was not until 1814 that _Don Giovanni_, nor until 1815 that the
_Marriage of Figaro_, was performed for the first time in Italy at the
Scala theatre.
Rossini's success, due above all to the fascinating character of his
easily appreciable melodies, was instantaneous; and it spread like
wild-fire from Italy all over Europe. More than a quarter of a century,
however, passed before Mozart's great works made their way from Vienna
to the chief cities of Italy, and to the capitals of France and England.
This tardy recognition of Mozart's dramatic genius may be explained in
part by the outbreak of the French revolution soon after their
production, and by the wars which distracted Europe from the time of the
French revolution until the pacification of 1815.